Digger

EASY AND I had ridden down from Kansas City to preside over the Blood Moon challenge. A couple of out-of-towners and wanna-bes showed up. Rook was a quiet Wolf—the total opposite of Boner. Motherfucker. If Boner hadn’t died in that fire, it wouldn’t have taken us as long as it did to track down the whole ugly mess.

None of the Dallas chapter brothers wanted to challenge Rook so that left the outsiders. Easy and I were there to make sure things stayed fair. Rook was strong enough to take on any comers. We represented the national council because whoever won would have to get the Russian’s approval. That didn’t come easy. Rook took the presidency without shedding any of his blood. That said something. We handed over the President’s cut with the Russian’s blessing.

A month after that last fire, the Nightriders took out the Hell Dog compound with the help of a Wolf Hardy knew from his Army days. Boomer walked the straight and narrow except when it came to threats to his pack. For some weird reason, that group of ex-military Wolves considered the Nightriders as an extension of their pack. The Russian extended the courtesy in return. We’d worked together on a couple of things—involving Hell Dogs and those bastards from Black Root Corporation.

I hadn’t caught Black Root’s stench here in Dallas. That meant jackshit. Those assholes were cockroaches. You never saw them until you snuck in and turned the lights on.

Easy insisted we check on the woman who would have been Smoke’s mate before we headed home. He’d gotten soft, being mated and with his and Sam’s adopted kids. Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt. If things had been different, the woman would have been part of our pack. Four months was enough time for her to move on.

Rook, for some reason, had kept tabs on her. She’d served her suspension but didn’t return to the arson squad. Instead, she was filing paperwork at the fire academy. Easy and I tracked her down there, then followed her home. Four months ago, she’d been healthy, vibrant. And I’d seen her devastated that morning after. Now? She was nothing but a shadow. She’d lost weight and her eyes were darkly bruised. Shit.

“Fuck, Digger. What are we gonna do?”

Good question. I didn’t have a fucking answer.

“The mating bond…” Easy’s voice trailed off and I caught a hint of pain there. His mate had ignored their bond at first and things went to hell in a hurry in the aftermath.

“Yeah,” I agreed. Easy stripped down. “What the hell?”

“I’m shifting. She’ll let me in. You come knock on the door, looking for your lost dog.” The bastard gave me a cocky grin and changed. Moments later, a black and silver wolf with Siberian husky eyes whrfled at me, wagged his tail like a fucking dog and trotted across the parking lot.

 

 

Leigh

I NO LONGER CARED what happened. There was a huge, gaping hole in my chest where my heart had once been. I’d always thought my girlfriends were drama queens when they carried on after a break-up. Their rhetoric was hyperbole at its silliest. Then I’d met Smoke. Only we hadn’t exactly broken up. Smoke was gone. Dead.

I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t do anything but sit and stare and nurse the hurt that ached all the way to my soul.

Yeah. No hyperbole here. None at all.

When I heard the scratching at the door, I opened it. Idiot that I am. A beautiful husky sat there. As soon as the door was wide enough for him to dart in, he did. He sat in front of me, whined, and pawed at my thigh. He was huge for a husky and I wondered if he might be a wolf mix. He had incredible blue eyes and they looked…right through me, like he knew the agonized misery I lived with every day.

Sinking to my knees, I buried my fingers in his fur. He licked at my tears and I briefly considered keeping him. Which was stupid. I couldn’t take care of myself. There was no way I could take care of a pet. Except he didn’t look like a stray. Someone in the complex had probably lost him. Two minutes later, someone cleared their throat. I hadn’t closed my door. My mistake.

 

 

Twenty-four hours later, I was still attempting to figure out why a couple of very big and very scary bikers had dragged me to this derelict train depot outside of Kansas City. The fence around the place made it look like a prison, except I could see the original building. It had probably been beautiful once. All Art Deco granite and interesting architecture. Which just went to show how brain dead I’d become. I was probably here to die, and all I could think about was how someone should restore the building.

They were Nightriders. Something Smoke had said to me before he left kept playing in my head. “You just signed my death warrant. And yours. I’ll try to protect you before I die.” I’d blown it off as his way of making a dramatic exit. Now, I wasn’t so sure. But why had they waited so long? A month after Smoke’s death, there’d been a big explosion that leveled a compound allegedly belonging to the Nightriders’ archenemies, the Hell Dogs. No bodies were ever found—dead or alive.

Smoke hadn’t betrayed his so-called brothers. That whole deal with the DA had been on me anyway. My guess was they were bringing me here to find their brand of justice. Fine. I was dead inside. If they killed me, it would just mean that my body had finally caught up.

The black Yukon we’d ridden in coming from Dallas paused at the gate. Two guys gave me steely-eyed stares. They could double as executioners for all the emotion they showed. Three men had ridden in the Yukon with me. Two more followed on Harleys. I must be really scary.

The vehicle rolled to a stop near the building’s entrance. The guy who’d appeared at my door and the guy who’s eyes reminded me of that damn dog’s got out. They spoke briefly with the two motorcycle riders. Then my door opened. I was hauled out, the two men climbed in, and the Yukon left.

Scary Man and Blue Eyes deposited me inside a big room—probably what had once been the station’s lobby. Three men stood there waiting. Vaguely aware of probably 30 more people in the room, my attention was caught and held by the man in the middle of the unwelcome committee. He was tall, broad-shouldered and incurably handsome. He also looked like he could snap me in half. He spoke to Scary Guy.

“Are you sure this is the right thing?”

He sounded foreign and I worked to place the accent. They all stared at me as if waiting for me to speak. I kept my mouth shut, studying them. The foreign dude was in charge. I didn’t need the “President” patch on his vest to know. Power rolled off him.

The two men standing at his sides were almost as big. The one with the vice president patch stood at attention, like a soldier. The other was leading-man handsome. What was it about these bikers? Every last one of them was the stuff of romance covers. The sexy beast with the Russian accent gave me the once over. Twice. No one spoke. He approached, stared down, holding my gaze.

“You are Leigh Daniels.”

It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. My knees were going rubbery and my insides felt like they were turning to liquid. This was undoubtedly the scariest man I had ever seen in my life. And despite my earlier musings, my sense of self-preservation was kicking in big time. Turns out I wasn’t quite ready to die after all.

“Do you know why you are here?”

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. I wanted to turn mouse and hide, and I was pretty sure anything I said would come out in a squeak.

“Have you seen Smoke’s wolf, Leigh Daniels?” the Russian asked.

“Smoke’s wolf?” Now I found my voice, though I was completely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He snapped his fingers. “Easy.”

Blue Eyes stepped around me and stripped. I watched, mouth hanging open. Then the man disappeared, my embarrassment at his rampant male nakedness replaced by a cringing wonder as bones snapped and muscles twisted. In the man’s place stood…not a dog, as I realized too late. He…it was too wild, too beautiful to be a dog. Black, silver and white with eyes of Siberian husky blue. I’d buried my fingers in this animal’s fur but at the moment, he looked like he would bite first, bark later. This was definitely not a dog. This was a wolf. In all his wild glory.

My knees collapsed and I sat on the floor. The wolf was so big I couldn’t meet him eye-to-eye. He was a head taller as he sat there, panting a little. How had I not noticed that before? And how was this even happening?

“Drugs.” Had to be. They’d roofied me or something. I muttered the word but the men around me laughed and the wolf made a sound too much like laughter for comfort.

“No,” the Russian said. “We did not drug you. But now you know our secret. Smoke’s secret.”

Werewolves? Not possible. They didn’t exist. Not like this. The man with the vice president patch squatted beside me. He was just as hard as the others but there was a tiny flicker of compassion in his eyes.

“We’re Wolves,” he said, as if that explained everything. “We aren’t quite human.” Well d’uh! My expression must have given my thoughts away because he continued. “We are genetically similar but we carry a splice in our DNA, an extra gene that allows us to shift.

“Can you accept Smoke as this?” The Russian’s voice was deep, with a growl overlapping the words.

A tear trickled down my cheek. I didn’t know. This was…too much. Too fantastical. None of it made sense. Why would it matter? Smoke was dead.

“He’s dead,” I murmured, as much to myself as to them.

“No,” the Russian said. “He is not.”

My heart stopped and my head jerked up on its own. I stared at the man, scarcely daring to believe him.

“Alive? Smoke is alive?” I surged to my feet with new-found hope. “But…I was there. I saw.”

“He survived the fire,” the really scary guy who had kidnapped me said. “I brought him here.”

“Without you, he is only half a man. One who lives in shadow,” the Russian continued. “He is not as he was. Are you ready to accept that?”

Since I had no clue what he was talking about, I kept my mouth shut. Was this all some elaborate joke? And what did he mean that Smoke wasn’t as he’d been? I blinked, putting the Russian’s words together. Half a man. Was Smoke caught in some nightmarish half-form like in the movies? Was that what he meant about me being able to accept Smoke as…a wolf? Without you… My mind whirled, sorting memories. Mates. His other half. Smoke’s words came pouring into my heart. He’d thought I was asleep when he said them. Mine, he’d promised. Forever.

“Be sure, Leigh Daniels, or leave.”

My brain went blank. This…it was all too much. I couldn’t process the information. Werewolves. Smoke alive but not. I stared at the wolf still sitting in front of me. Horror welled up until I thought I would vomit from it. I left. Not running. Stumbling.

I got as far as the gate then stopped. I told my foot to step forward but it refused to obey. The gate stood open, the guards invisible. I was steps from freedom, but my body would not move. My heart pounded in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see for the tears streaming from my eyes. Blind and in agony, I sank onto the damp ground, hugging my arms around my chest.

A hand settled with utmost care on my shoulder. Hands lifted me to my feet.

“Go to him.” The Russian, his voice unbearably gentle. “If you leave him, we will lose him to the beast.” Now he sounded unbearably sad. How could a man so hard and ruthless before now be this…caring protector?

These were Nightriders. Outlaw bikers. They were hard, cold. Killers. They didn’t get to care, to be compassionate. Yet I could see it on their faces. Smoke mattered. Smoke—brothers, he’d called them. I saw it now, in their eyes. They mourned him and not because he’d died, but because he was lost to them some other way—a way I didn’t understand.

I bent over from the waist, struggling to breathe. I closed my eyes, opened my heart, my mind. Smoke. He wasn’t far away but he was. I tried to touch him, didn’t realize I was stretching out my hand, that I was walking toward the center of the compound until I blinked. I stopped.

None of the men spoke. Skin was drawn tightly across their faces. I recognized exhaustion in each of them. I still didn’t understand any of this, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except seeing Smoke. Touching him.

They must have seen something on my own face because after a nod from the Russian, the big guy who’d kidnapped me marched me to a second building behind the depot. The others trailed behind us, entering the barracks-style building with us. Down a hallway of identical doors and then we stopped. Without knocking, the man opened a door, shoved me in, and retreated.

A figure stood in the shadows. My heart hammered. I knew this man. I knew his size, his shape, his smell. “Smoke.” I breathed his name then I was in his arms.

I angled my head, found his mouth. He kissed me, our breath mingling like a shimmering bridge between reality and dreams, shadow and light. Was he truly real?

“Yes. Are you?”

We were on the bed, heart-to-heart, mouth-to-mouth, our bodies aligned like Jupiter and Mars. I wanted more than just arousal. I wanted the intimacy of joining with him, the unity of our souls as we came together. I wanted only him. Clothes disappeared and finally, finally, I pulled him into the aching heat of my body. He groaned. I sighed.

Yes, I decided. I was totally ready.